What is translation collaboration?

Q: What are the business benefits of translation collaboration?

Streamline communications: Standardize communication throughout the translation process by centralizing all dialogues in one platform. Minimize miscommunication and the possibility of errors to improve overall translation quality. Reduce turnaround times: With clear lines of communication, teams can work together to complete projects faster and more efficiently. Remain in control: Track project progress, monitor key metrics and maintain complete visibility over every step of the translation process. Integrate in-house systems to simplify communication and content handoffs. Gain transparency: With project data accessible to all stakeholders, information can be easily viewed and discussed at every step of the process. The need for manual communication methods is eliminated and information can be accessed in real time.

Q: What is a translation collaboration solution and how does it work?

A translation collaboration solution, such as Trados Team , is designed to facilitate teamwork at every step of the localization process, unite disparate teams and improve communication. It brings all stakeholders into a single integrated environment to increase efficiency, improve translation quality and ultimately reduce translation costs. With all project data and communication centralized, teams can easily collaborate on translation tasks, issues can be identified before they arise, and errors can be minimized. Translation collaboration solutions provide built-in features to eliminate manual communication methods, track team activity, and offer complete transparency for all involved in the translation process.

Translation collaboration, sometimes referred to as collaborative translation, is a workflow methodology that involves bringing together various stakeholders, such as translators, project managers and subject-matter experts, to deliver translation projects on time and within budget. This process employs technology to reduce the total translation lifecycle, improves communication between translators and other stakeholders and eliminates many administrative tasks.

Without the right technology to support translation collaboration, it can be difficult to work across highly distributed teams, streamline processes and ensure deadlines are met.

More about translation collaboration

What are the use cases for translation collaboration?

Translation collaboration is used for various purposes, including:

Bringing together disparate teams
Centralizing and sharing project data
Facilitating agile project management
Connecting business systems

What are the business benefits of translation collaboration?

Streamline communications: Standardize communication throughout the translation process by centralizing all dialogues in one platform. Minimize miscommunication and the possibility of errors to improve overall translation quality.
Reduce turnaround times: With clear lines of communication, teams can work together to complete projects faster and more efficiently.
Remain in control: Track project progress, monitor key metrics and maintain complete visibility over every step of the translation process. Integrate in-house systems to simplify communication and content handoffs.
Gain transparency: With project data accessible to all stakeholders, information can be easily viewed and discussed at every step of the process. The need for manual communication methods is eliminated and information can be accessed in real time.

What is the difference between translation collaboration and translation management?

Translation management automates processes to eliminate repetitive manual tasks, increases control and delivers greater efficiency. It’s particularly important for businesses and organizations that operate in multiple countries or regions and need to provide their content in multiple languages. Translation collaboration, on the other hand, looks to centralize and standardize communication throughout the localization process to minimize errors and facilitate collaboration. The two concepts, alongside translation productivity, are integral to any robust translation strategy.

What is the difference between translation collaboration and crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing and translation collaboration are two completely different translation approaches. Crowdsourcing involves enlisting a large group of people to complete translation work over the internet and is often used for large multi-language projects to reduce costs and accelerate the translation process. Contributors can be anyone from freelance translators to translation enthusiasts to subject-matter experts. Some crowdsourcing platforms are not curated and allow these users to keep their identity and qualifications anonymous, which can result in poor translation quality. In comparison, translation collaboration involves bringing together a team of carefully chosen professionals who you know and trust to work on a project.

What is a translation collaboration solution and how does it work?

A translation collaboration solution, such as Trados Team, is designed to facilitate teamwork at every step of the localization process, unite disparate teams and improve communication. It brings all stakeholders into a single integrated environment to increase efficiency, improve translation quality and ultimately reduce translation costs. With all project data and communication centralized, teams can easily collaborate on translation tasks, issues can be identified before they arise, and errors can be minimized. Translation collaboration solutions provide built-in features to eliminate manual communication methods, track team activity, and offer complete transparency for all involved in the translation process.

What features would you expect to see in a typical translation collaboration solution?

Many translation collaboration solutions provide the following key features:

Automatic notifications, comments and mentions to exchange feedback quickly
Chat functionality to centralize communication in the platform
Communication history to log previous exchanges
Assignment features to allocate work
Activity tracker to monitor information access
Basic to advanced query management

What is query management?

Translation queries are inevitable throughout the localization process and are necessary to develop high-quality translations. The process of receiving, reviewing and answering these queries is known as query management. Queries can be raised by any stakeholder involved in the localization process, including project managers, translators, reviewers, subject-matter experts and customers, and can be collated and communicated in a variety of different ways. Tracking what is done with these queries and ensuring they are answered clearly and in a timely manner can be difficult without the right technology in place.

Query management solutions have been designed to help with this process: they can facilitate the tracking, management, delegation, archiving, searching and reusing of translator queries. Query management solutions can be integrated into translation management systems (TMS) and translation collaboration solutions to further streamline the localization process.

Related resources

Introduction to translation collaboration – webinar recording

Watch our webinar recording to learn about the Trados solutions designed to help teams of any size work together more efficiently by streamlining processes, reducing manual tasks and reporting on the progress of projects.

Trados online editor – Helping teamwork make the dream work – blog

Collaboration is key to improving productivity and making sure translation jobs go as smoothly and quickly as possible. Read our blog to discover how the Trados online editor makes it easier to work together.

Trados Team – datasheet

Trados Team enhances collaboration and streamlines processes for translation professionals. Our datasheet explains the benefits of centralized resources, automated routing and agile project management for efficient translation teams.